Haifa Zangana

Abdellah Taïa

Children's Book

Biography or Memoir

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Graphic Novels, Comic Books, Illustrated Books, and Manga

Palestine

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Iran

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Oman

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Art and Art History

Environment, Health, and Science

Gastronomy

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Journalism and Media Studies

Literary Theory and Criticism

Political, Cultural, and Social History

Religion and Spirituality

Feminism and Gender

Anthropology and Society

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Founded in 1995 by Dan Simon, and named for the seven authors who committed to a home with a fiercely independent spirit, Seven Stories Press publishes uncompromising political books, fiction, and poetry.A little historyThe Seven Stories story began in 1983–84, when Dan Simon came across a story by Nelson Algren called “A Bottle of Milk for Mother” in an old anthology edited by Robert Penn Warren that Simon bought from a street vendor for a dollar. He then read everything Algren wrote that he could find and discovered that Algren’s books—all of them—had been allowed to go out of print. Simon’s friend and colleague Glenn Thompson, founder and publisher of Writers and Readers Publishing, encouraged Simon to see if he could obtain the rights, offering to give him his own imprint and to cover the printing costs. The first books—The Neon Wilderness, then Never Come Morning—were published as “Dan Simon/Four Walls Eight Windows” books at Writers and Readers, which at the time was distributed in the US by W.W. Norton, where Simon was working as an assistant editor after grad school when he met Glenn. The Algren books sold well, and got some attention.In 1985, Simon formed a partnership with another young editor, John Oakes, who was at Grove. Together they incorporated and raised some funds in 1986. Thompson let them have the remaining stock of the early Algren reprints for good luck.After ten years as an independent literary and political press under the co-direction of Simon and Oakes, Four Walls Eight Windows bifurcated and the two editors went their separate ways as independent book publishers, each taking their respective halves of the Four Walls list, Oakes continuing to use the Four Walls Eight Windows name, and Simon as founder in 1995 of Seven Stories Press—named in honor of the first seven authors at Four Walls Eight Windows who chose to join him on the adventure: Octavia E. Butler, Annie Ernaux, Gary Null, Project Censored, Charley Rosen, Vassilis Vassilikos, and the estate of Nelson Algren. After the first seven came another 20 or so. But without the first seven Simon said that he would not have set out for a second time as founder of a new independent press. The first book under the new imprint was Vassilikos’s And Dreams Are Dreams…, a collection of three novellas that appeared in the fall of 1995 from the author of the celebrated political thriller, Z, the basis for the Costa-Gavras film of the same name.Fiercely IndependentSeven Stories publishes works of the human imagination—sometimes in the form of fiction and literature, sometimes in the form of political nonfiction and sometimes in a hybrid form that has elements of both. Our books may be written originally in English or in other languages—as much as 25% of our list in any given season may be works in translation from the French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Russian, Swedish, Polish, Korean, or Vietnamese among other languages—or, as is true of many of the works of Ariel Dorfman, written in two languages simultaneously, the author going back and forth between English and Spanish until the text is complete.Whether political or literary or both together, Seven Stories is as well known for publishing on human rights, social and economic justice, and media as for its prize-winning American fiction, literature in translation, and poetry collections. We believe that the mix here of politics and fiction, of protest and celebration, of militancy and tenderness is important. Our credo is that publishers have a special responsibility to defend free speech and human rights, and to celebrate the gifts of the human imagination wherever we can.Whether publishing the zeitgeist­-changing fiction of American masters Kate Braverman, Octavia E. Butler, Rick DeMarinis, Barry Gifford, Peter Plate and Chavisa Woods, newsbreaking investigative reporting by Greg Palast or Loretta Napoleoni, the bestselling late writings of Kurt Vonnegut (including New York Times hardcover bestseller A Man without a Country), National Book Award-winning Poems Seven by Alan Dugan, Greed by Nobel Prize-winner Elfriede Jelinek, the 2016 Mildred L. Batchelder Honor Book Award-winning middle-grade novel Adam & Thomas by Aharon Appelfeld, the 2016 Stonewall Book Award-winning Sex Is a Funny Word, or Kia Corthron’s The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter, currently shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Seven Stories earns its reputation for bringing books that might otherwise have been marginalized thunderously into the mainstream conversation.Seven Stories publishes two major annual books each year, Human Rights Watch’s World Report, which catalogues the changing human rights situation in over 90 countries and territories; and Project Censored’s Censored, which tracks the news that in a highly functioning democracy would be on the front pages of every metropolitan daily and leading the evening news broadcast, but in our country is relegated to so-called alternative publications. Noam Chomsky wrote us recently in praise of Project Censored on the occasion of its 40th anniversary this year, citing “its remarkable achievements, both in bringing to us critically important stories that have had little or no media attention and in engaging young activists who will be able to carry on this very valuable work.  A crucial contribution to the hope for a more just and democratic society.” For twenty-five of its 40 years, Project Censored has partnered with Seven Stories.These annuals arrive each year alongside pioneering nonfiction from Russell Banks, Kate Bornstein, Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Jack Forbes, Shere Hite, Derrick Jensen, Kalle Lasn, Inga Muscio, Ralph Nader, Hal Niedzvicki, Loretta Napoleoni, Barbara Seaman, Howard Zinn and so many others. They are joined on the Seven Stories list by necessary works in translation from giants of the global literary and political scene like Assia Djebar, Ariel Dorfman, Marguerite Duras, Annie Ernaux, Jean Giono, Hwang Sok-yong, and Vassilis Vassilikos, and prominent and important fresh voices like Wojciech Jagielski, Lola Lafon, and Abdella Taïa. Seven Stories is also pioneering graphic works that range from Ted Rall’s bestselling political biographies, to the exquisite and bestselling Graphic Canon anthologies edited by Russ Kick that have introduced hundreds of illustrators and graphic artists to a new reading public, and re-introduced the world’s classic literature—arguably humankind’s most important and lasting legacy—to a new generation of readers discovering Shakespeare, Sappho, Dante, and so many other great writers for the first time in the form of ingenious and transformative graphics.

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Haifa Zangana

Abdellah Taïa

context, diversity, and your next great read